Anatoly Pereslegin makes very noisy and conceptual and long electronic music. Xenophobia features three works, 20 to 27 minutes each, all made using the same mold: continuously screeching high frequencies, evanescent low rumbles. Sounds are long and stretched out, the music is ambient yet violent, changing yet static. And there’s not enough time between the tracks to let you take a breather – one track ends abruptly and the next one starts immediately. I’m strongly reminded of the work of Zbigniew Karkowsky and Tetsuo Furudate. One piece is fine (it scrubs your ears clean and leaves you in an altered state, dizzy), but three of them gets repetitive. Still, I intend to broadcast one track on Délire Actuel one of these days.

This album tries many different things at once. It starts in ambient experimental electronic mode, with abyssal textures, then later features an impressionistic piano solo. In between, Creature on a Lavatory Pan goes from the sickly-sweet instrumentals to artsy noise and German-style electronic music. Too much of a mish-mash. It could have been tidied up and edited from this 78-minute set to something shorter.

How convenient! FIMAV starts next week, and there I’ll be seeing (and hearing) a sound installation by Érick D’Orion with ruined pianos, inspired by the work of Ross Bolleter. And there comes a new record by Bolleter on Emanem, a gem of a CD called Night Kitchen. 14 short improvisations on five ruined pianos. The music goes tock, clac and dongngngngn. None of these pianos produces a stable tone. And Bolleter knows all of their indiosyncrasies by heart. And he puts them to great use, combining sounds and textures into noisy yet very delicate and tender constructs. Limping lullabies for a haunted house.

A strong free improvisation session between two Portugese musicians (Ernesto Rodrigues on viola and Manuel Mota on electric guitar) and two Californians (Ernesto Diaz-Infante on steel-string acoustic guitar and Gino Robair on energized surfaces). Abstract music, rather emotionless, consisting of scratchings and scrubbings and tweakings, producing fuzzy textures that take on a life of their own. Definitely not an easy listen, but a fine meeting of creative minds.

In a now slightly distant past, the Czech alternative scene - especially the one in Brno - thrived with avant-garde artists. Sadly, for the past decade, the music of Iva Bittova, Pavel Fajt and Vladimír Václavek has declined and become much less interesting. However, this new project by the latter has me dreaming of a better future. Edel is a collaboration with guitarist Frieder Zimmermann and percussionnists Miloš Dvořáček and Matthias Macht. Sensible, intelligent, complex, songs that have been carefully thought out. There’s a little of the mood of Bittova’s Bilé Inferno here. And this is clearly the kind of record that will grow on me with each listen.